Mark O'Leary Pet Shop Boys

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After Mandrake Root, which disintegrated as we had Leaving Certs, I played a few gigs in Sir Henry's, one was the first gig under my own name. I had a bit of a band with Minky and Cal, and also doing lots of session work, right up until I left for Los Angeles, one interesting diversion was Rory O'Brien, the Keyboardist in Mandrake Root invited me to play in a Pet Shop Boys type group called Voltaire. It was a bit of a band, Rory and another guy on Keys and I was invited to play guitar. We were using various drum machines and synth bass. Rory and the other chap would alternate on vocals. Never gigged, but copious rehearsing and recording. It was to much chagrin when Rory invited me, I intimated, what do you want from me? Mainly power chords, some unison lines, delay melody lines and some solos. They had a vision, a concept, I was intrigued. I remember showing up at the gates, now in a trench coat and there was no indecision, no talk, no pfrancing, the guy just walked over to his keyboards and started playing, Rory joined in and I started to immerse into their melodies, chord sequences and rhythm patterns. We rehearsed in a mansion near the Lee Fields, tons of synths, more than Tangerine Dream, we got a set together and had a decent sound, it was a cool set up, Rory would set up facing the other guy with me in the middle on guitar and we had basic strobe lights, PA and monitors, magic, I was doing this right up to the start of the leaving cert, after the leaving, the lads went off Euro railing, I had to work to support myself during my LA studies, but it was a super band, that said, I went off to LA, they went off to college and high end degrees. Like the roman soldier overlooking the tyber, this band had the most potential to make it of any band I had been in, in terms of reasonable commercial success, Voltaire could've been on Top of the Pops, Glastonbury, MSD and more, maybe not quite that relished mezzanine level between Fontaines DC (a class band) and U2, but not far off it. Bands are good times, happy days, but if we had the manager from Midway looking after Voltaire with Tom Carey on electronic drums, now that's a winner.

Uploaded: 2025-09-05
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